Thursday, May 31, 2018

DIY Paver Patio

Our project this year was to create a new flowerbed, a paver patio, a retaining wall and a fire pit.  Man was it alot of work!!  We started out by visiting our local nursery to find out what kind of stone we wanted.  My husband had a design in mind and we just need to get our heads around what we needed in terms of material and labor.

We ended up getting a kit for a paver circle and a fire pit and then measured how much more square feet of pavers would need.  We watched alot of you tube and asked alot of questions to the professionals.

We decided to use a couple different kinds of paver.  We used Belgard pavers in a couple of different variations....Cambridge Cobble, Holland Stone and the Stonegate retaining wall stones. We were able to get our pavers from Amcor, but if you are not a contractor, you must go to your local distributor to get them.

We took out the grass, compacted the dirt...leveled it and compacted it some more.  We brought in about 12 ton of 3/4 in road base and leveled that...compacted it again, added some sand and then finally laid the pavers and the retaining wall stone.  Once that was done we back filled the space behind the retaining wall, compacted the patio again, cleaned off all of the existing debris...added some polymeric sand.  Make sure you clean off the excess sand and then wet it down.  We let it dry for 24 hrs.  Once that was done we added our fire pit  and then we added a sealant to make the stone look wet and shiny rather than all dried out.  We added weed fabric and plants in the flower beds and put down bark and had curbing put in to tie it all together.

It took us about us about 6 weeks to finish it all!  There were a few missteps and things we didn't expect like a honey bees swarming on a tree we had to pass under while bring all of the road base and sand down, adding retaining wall pieces to help keep the patio level, and even flipping over the sod cutter machine!  But...in the end, it was definitely worth the time it took to build!

Watch the video to see the transformation!!

💗💗💗💗💗💗

Heather




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